It is of course very convenient
declaring the two
Gärdet festivals the starting point of
Swedish progg, but as with any 'movement', progg is the result of
what came before it. There's not one thing that appears completely
out of the blue with no ties to the history. Besides, claims of the
Gärdet festivals as the real beginning of progg exclude bands such
as
Hansson & Karlsson and
Baby Grandmothers from the
equation which needless to say is plain revisionism. But the roots of
progg go deeper and further back than that too. Several prominent
and important characters of progg or, if you will, 'the music
movement', were in bands long before progg was a thinkable concept.
Therefore, and despite the 1967-1982 scope of this blog, I think it's
time to go back a bit in history and shed some light on what went on
in Sweden in the 60's.
I don't think anyone actually ever counted
how many active bands there were between 1962 and 1968, but
likely several hundreds. Some of them hit big while others had just a
single or two released, while others in turn never rose above the
amateur level playing to friends and rehearsing in their parents'
garages and basements. Needless to say, it's impossible to
mention even a fraction of all those bands here, why this is merely a
small overview of some of the domestically better known bands. Bands
familiar to Swedes but not necessarily to anyone outside our borders.
Just a linguistic note before plunging
ahead: Swedish 60's bands rarely used the grammatical article 'the'
in their names. It's ”Namelosers”, not ”The Namelosers”; ”Mascots”,
not ”The Mascots”. While it may appear inadequate to English
speakers, and although exceptions exist, I've decided to keep in line with the original and most common band name
procedure.
As in most Western countries, the
impact of The Beatles were massive on the Swedish youth. Through
pirate radio stations such as Radio Syd ('Radio South') and Radio
Nord ('Radio North'), and through national broadcasting radio show
Tio i topp ('Top ten'), the new melodic sounds from the UK reached
our domestic listeners. A pop band craze took on swiftly, although
those new amateur bands from all over the country were called twist
bands early on. A wimpy name but truth be told: many of the bands
were pretty wimpy sounding anyway. Some started out even before The
Beatles broke big, but The Beatles and, to a not negligible extent,
also The Rolling Stones and The Who had a huge impact on the majority
of the Swedish beat groups.
TAGES
With limited knowledge of the English
language (including some truly awkward pronunciation) and a not
necessarily natural penchant for songwriting, many of those bands
relied on covers of UK bands and American rhythm & blues
standards, but some creatively fortunate bands featured good
songwriters and above-average skills. Most notably Gothenburg's Tages (pronunced 'tah-gehs',
not 'taygs'). After a weak start with a couple of less than
impressive 45's, they got the chance to record and release an
impressive amount of five LP's before disbanding (or rather evolving into Blond
who also had one full length disc out, in 1969). Tages won a battle
of the bands contest early on and became known as ”The Beatles of
the Swedish West coast”. Soon freeing up a considerable amount of
songwriting skills and a genuine sense of creative studio work, their
last two albums are exceptional for a Swedish 60's band. Both
”Contrast” (featuring the psychedelic workout
"Fuzzy Patterns") and especially their final album
”Studio” are
landmark efforts of very elaborate pop psych.
Add to that their final singles among which
"Fantasy Island" is a beautiful example of how far the band would go before the saga ended.
Tages featured one Göran Lagerberg on bass, who later became a
stahlwart on the progg scene, generously sharing his abilities with
bands such as
Kebnekajse,
Fläsket Brinner,
Jason's Fleece and
Egba.
He was also an oft-hired studio musician why his name can be found on
albums by
Joakim Skogsberg,
Sam Ellison,
Bernt Staf,
Pugh Rogefeldt,
Bo Hansson and the likes.
MASCOTS
The decidedly second best Beatles
influenced beat group was Mascots. As with Tages, Mascots had an
excellent flair for short, catchy pop tunes appropriate for the 7”
format. They did however release two full length discs, the eponymous
debut album in 1965, and ”Ellpee” the following year. Their best track by far was however first issued on a flexi disc that came
free to subscribers to the premier Swedish pop magazine
Bildjournalen (the song later released on a proper 7"):
”Words Enough to Tell You” is where Mascots let
all their melodic expertise shine the brightest. It even beats Tages
in their own game, with lush harmony vocals and an absolutely
irresistable melody line moving in perfect ways somewhere between The
Beatles and The Hollies. It's no wonder that ”Words Enough to Tell
You” has found its way to several various artists comps over the
years, both nationally and abroad. It certainly deserves it.
It's
a sad fact that a
burgeoning
interest in politics brought Mascots to their demise. The band evolved into the
unfathomably abysmal political band/theatre ensemble/general
break-every-record-with-their-name-on-it-inspiring
Fria Proteatern.
What an utter waste of almost unrivalled pop sensibilities!
SHANES
Predating both Tages and Mascots were
Shanes. They first tried their luck as an instro band in the Ventures
vein in 1963, but as pop mania spread like a wildfire across the
nation, the Western twang of their very earliest 45's changed in
favour of a more typical beat group sound. When they went for a
rougher, more garage or freakbeat inspired style, as on the pounding and hard-driving
”I Don't Want Your Love”, and when they at the very end of their career
moved a step or two towards pop psych as on the very nice Yardbirds influenced
”Faces, Faces”, it really worked in their favour. That said, their shamelessly poppy
”Chris Craft No. 9” is a prime example of
Swedish 60's beat. Shanes
compilations exist but tend to focus on their most familiar hits and
not necessarily on their most worthwhile tracks why it's a pretty
frustrating task approaching the band's output. You need to sit
through a fair amount of crap to save the nuggets.
OLA & THE JANGLERS
The same can be said about Ola &
The Janglers. A graphic diagram of the quality of their output would
look conspicuously similar to an ECG
curve. Their bad songs were really bad and their good songs were
really good. At their rawest they were a rather convincing garage
rock band, and their stabs at psychedelia – most notably the
Eastern-tinged track ”No One Knows What Happens Round the Corner”
– were credible enough. Their good stuff would fill an LP length
compilation, but a good one doesn't exist, only a couple focusing
on their hits, including pointless Johnny-come-lately covers of Del
Shannon's ”Runaway” and Chris Montez's ”Let's Dance”. I wish
compilers would cast off the demon of nostalgia and go for the truly
good stuff instead. There's one pretty great album hidden in Ola &
The Janglers' ouvre but that has yet to see the light of day.
One
of the Janglers' most prominent members, Claes af Geijerstam,
recorded one underrated popsikey album in 1970, ”Out of My Hair”.
The Ola of the bunch, Håkansson, went on to fame and fortune with
bands like Secret Service who scored big with their single ”Oh
Susie” in the 80's. He also became an influential music business
honcho.
LEE KINGS
Lee Kings' output is relatively slim.
Apart from a slew of singles it consists of one and a half LP only
(the half one being shared with the forgettable band The Sunspots
which contribute three tracks). Lee Kings were obviously sensitive to
the changing times, constantly trying to come up with a song that
would sit particularly well with the adolescent record buyers. You
can easily say their vision, if ever they had one, was shaped by the
whims of Tio i topp. That said, they did put out some memorable
tracks, especially when psychedelia was slowly becoming the new
worldwide fad. From Lee Kings' last year in existence, 1967, it's
well worth lending an ear to
”Coming from the Ground” (backed by a surprisingly rowdy and fuzz fuelled "Day Tripper") and the highly endearing
"The Trees Are Talking".
Singer Lenne Broberg later scored a
brontosaurus sized hit with ”Mälarö kyrka”, a soft sounding
predecessor of sorts to
Contact's ”Fyrvaktarens dotter” and
something of a 'guilty pleasure' of mine. And of course: guitarist Bengan Dahlén went to
Fläsket Brinner.
STEAMPACKET
Steampacket, a.k.a. Steampacket II,
a.k.a. The Longboatmen were also stylistic grasshoppers, even more so
than Lee Kings. Their eight 45's present a wide array of styles, from
the moody balladry of
”Bara ett par dar” to the fiery
freakbeat of
”Take Her Any Time”, with stops at psychedelia,
country music and straightforward pop along the way. But with the
great Rolf Scherrer and the exceptionally talented Mikael Ramel (both
vocals and guitar) in the band, they were well equipped to dabble in
whatever they felt like. Their complete recordings were released on
the print-on-demand CD ”The Singles and More 1965-68” in 2015,
and although it's far from stylistically lucid there's certainly not
much to object to as far as quality goes. Having already mentioned
Scherrer and Ramel, it's obvious why Steampacket are crucial to the
pre-history of progg. Scherer was an early member of Kebnekajse and
can also be heard on several Bo Hansson albums. And
Mikael Ramel –
well, he's Mikael Ramel, i.e. a genius solo artist of ”Till dej”
et al fame, plus a one-time member of Fläsket Brinner.
So what about their multiple band
names? Well, in Sweden they were called Steampacket II for their
first three singles to avoid being confused with Rod Stewart's band
Steampacket. For the same reason, ”Take Her Anytime” was released
in the UK as The Longboatmen. Later they were domestically known simply as Steampacket.
SHAKERS
Say what you will of
Tommy Rander –
later to become main leftwing fundamentalist operator on Gothenburg's progg
scene and eventually the nemesis and relentless decapitator of
progg's unkempt creativity, and recently taking an unnerving turn
towards ideas sampled from the extreme rightwing (after all, politics aren't a linear scale but a circle where the extreme right and the extreme left are much closer neighbours than a lot of people have the guts to admit) – but he indeed
had a strong vision of what Shakers were supposed to be. More
precisely a snotty Rolling Stones/Pretty Things styled, abrasive
rhythm & blues band. If you don't mind his fonetical gibberish
(English in Rander's mind) on early tracks and only slightly bettered
in time for the band's final releases, you have quite a few highlights to
discover. Shakers were also one of the earliest and most eager
condoners of psychedelia, as evident on excellent numbers such as
”Who Will Buy (These Wonderful Evils)” and
”Tracks Remain”.
All their recordings are decidedly rough-hewn which is a welcome
change of pace after delving into the discographies of the more
polite sounding bands. And if you pretend there's no Rander
involvement whatsoever, it gets even better...
NAMELOSERS
In terms of rawness, Malmö's
Namelosers gave Shakers a run for their money. Few Swedish 60's
singles rock as hard and brutal as Namelosers' throat-grabbing
rendition of
”Land of a 1000 Dances”. Of all the recorded
versions of that old chestnut, Namelosers' version is hands down
among the top 3. I mean, seriously, that fuzz guitar can simply melt
concrete walls! It's hard to fathom the fact it was recorded and
released in Sweden as early as 1965 when fuzz boxes were a brand new
thing only just heard on Rolling Stones and Beatles records.
Namelosers were truly in with the in-crowd.
Founded already in 1962 as Tony Lee
& The Fenders, they soon changed their name to The Beatchers. As
such they released their debut EP in late 1964 with Gary U.S. Bonds
cover
”New Orleans” as the lead track. A Gothenburg band called
The Beachers, without a 'T' in the middle, wasn't too happy having
another similarly named band around, and threatened The Beatchers,
with a 'T' in the middle, with a lawsuit. The now nameless band
needed to come up with something catchy to call themselves, and a
name contest was arranged by pirate radio station Radio Syd. I've no
idea what other listener suggestions there might have been, but
whoever came up with Namelosers (with an obvious reference to the
recent Beachers debacle) won... ”New Orleans” was hastily
reissued (on a new label) with the substituted band name on the
cover. The name mess proved advantageous however, bringing a fair
amount of attention to the band, and the song went straight to No. 3
on the Tio i topp chart. Fans were frantic, causing havoc at
Namelosers shows, and the band quickly earned a bad boys reputation,
Rolling Stones style. Restaurants wouldn't let them in because of
their long hair and scruffy looks. (Those were the days...) To
further nurture their hoodlum image, they told Bildjournalen that
one of their favourite pastimes was to go to Malmö's local dump and
shoot rats. Probably nothing more than a publicity stunt, although
their best singles indeed sound as if they could kill a diversity of
rodents...
Namelosers released a total of fourteen
tracks from 1964 to December 1965. One further song appeared on a
Bildjournalen flexi disc in 1966, the storming
”Do-Ao”. For some
odd reason, the impossible-to-overrate ”Land of a 1000 Dances”
failed to enter Tio i topp. Taken by surprise and hugely
disappointed, Namelosers called it quits shortly after. In 1989, rare
records shop and record label Got To Hurry issued a compilation of
Namelosers complete studio recordings. Still possible to locate in
used condition, a reissue is nevertheless long overdue.
ANNAABEE-NOX
In the small but loud legion of more
garage infused bands you can't ignore the curiously spelled
Annaabee-Nox. As with Shakers, no label trusted them with an album
contract. Seven singles and a track on a Bildjournalen flexi disc are
all that officially remain from their 1965-1968 lifespan. A rare surviving
live tape confirms what people lucky enough to have seen them in
concert have said ever since: they were one wild stage act. Not all
of their studio recordings retain that same high level fervor, but
you really don't want to mess with
”I'm Not Talking” and
”Bo Bo Boggie Pack” [sic!] if you love your mother. If you love your wife/husband
and yourself, you don't want to pay the prices for the original 45's
either – if they ever appear in playable condition that is.
Thankfully, their complete discography received the compilation
treatment in 2014 by Allatiders Skivhandel, and it's also easily
obtainable in digital format courtesy of Parlophone.
LEA RIDERS GROUP
Of all 60's bands, Lea Riders Group is
probably the one that most notably bridges the 60's and the progg era.
They were also one of the most technically mature rock bands Sweden
spawned during the entire decade. Led by Hawkey Franzén and
featuring
Slim Borgudd and Bosse Häggström, they were the embryo of
Made In Sweden. Without Jojje Wadenius, the jazz elements were a lot
fewer, although you could still hear jazz strains in their best known
track
”Dom kallar oss mods” (the leitmotif from Stefan Jarl's
[semi-]documentary of the same name). Without a doubt the band's high
point, with wild screeching guitars, frenetic staccato vocals
dissolving into stoned and paranoid groans, drums pounding out a
disintegrating beat that is hazy and hard as rebar at the same time,
a full frontal psychedelic assault leaving only smoke and dead bodies
behind. A lot of people are familiar with it from being famously
included on ”Pebbles Volume 3” (and subsequently on other comps
as well). A track like that obviously raises the expectations for Lea
Riders Group's other outpourings, but they might leave you
disappointed at first. Which is not to say that the rest of their material is
bad. Not at all. On the contrary, a lot of it is hard-boiled,
thick-skinned, jailhouse badass rhythm & blues of international
stature with all the chops needed to pull it off with brilliant precision. Just not from the same mould as ”Dom kallar oss mods”.
For an annoyingly long time, Lea Riders
Group's recordings were just about impossible to find. Swedish label
Garageland Records tried to rectify that in the late 80's when they
released a vinyl comp, later reissued on CD as ”The Forgotten
Generation”. However, the Garageland CD is best forgotten too as
the sound is so dull and hissy that I suspect the tracks were taken
from a fourth or fifth generation cassette dub. That hack job was
thoroughly pushed into the depths of redundancy when Universal (for
once!) did a good thing and released the collected singles on a
Record Store Day LP in 2018. Although losing the bonuses from the
Garageland CD (all of them live recordings and/or rehearsals in
dubious fidelity from what I recall) and not including the additional
instrumental tracks from the soundtrack to Jarl's movie, Universal's
”The Singles 1966-68” is absolutely essential from any
perspective.
FRIENDS
When Garageland put out the
unsatisfactory ”Forgotten Generation” CD, they concurrently
reissued two other titles from their back catalogue, one by Panthers,
and one by the rather peculiar band Friends. The Panthers release is
best ignored altogether, but the Friends CD ”Talkin' 'bout Us” is
well worthy of attention. At least to some. They're probably a band
in the 'love it or hate it' category, all depending on what you think
of Anders Peedú's vocals which admittedly is an acquired taste. The pronunciation heard on the early
Shakers singles is Queen's English compared to the sometimes
indecipherable syllables coming out of
Peedú's mouth. But if that doesn't bother you
(and I've learnt not to let it bother me although it took some time
and persistance), then Friends were a rather remarkable group who
despised the commonly overt Beatles and Stones influences. Their take
on rhythm & blues was quite frankly unique among Swedish bands.
”It Ain't Necessarily So” and
”Empty Handed”, both taken from
Friends' 1965 debut 45, are as raw as any of the American garage
bands, untrained to the nth degree but nevertheless consistent and
chock-full of self-assured and cocky attitude bordering on the
nihilistic. Despite all Friends' obvious shortcomings (like having a
twelve year old drummer, but so did Ornette Coleman), the three
singles released during their short lifetime as a band are some
rather exceptional stuff. The Garageland album fleshes out the short
playing time those singles make for with some previously unreleased
tapes which add nicely to the dizzying experience.
Although having Karusell, a major label
with a thorough experience of bringing fame to their acts, backing them, nothing
could catapult Friends to the commercially viable level of Tages,
Mascots and Shanes. An
appearance on the biggest (actually, only) TV
talk show Hylands hörna generated gigs but no impressive record sales. Friends' fan base was largely made up of outcasts and
mods from Stockholm's underground circuits, people often sharing the
hard-living Friends' destructive lifestyle of drugs and
alcohol. Years after the demise of the band – it was all over in
1966 – two of the members died from substance abuse. A unique band
with an ever so inspiring integrity, but with a tragic story attached
to it.
HEP STARS
I've not yet mentioned the biggest act
of all: Hep Stars. Still heralded among a lot of people, I refuse to
believe their position in people's minds is anything but pure
nostalgia. Because man, did they suck! The only thing worthy of
acknowledgement is their smash hit cover of Vince Taylor's
”Cadillac”
which remains a stone cold classic. Albumwise, the only remotely
amusing thing they did was the undeniably frantic live document ”On
Stage” where they rush through their repertoire at breakneck speed
in front of hysterical teenage girls. It's not a good album by any
stretch, but yeah, it is remotely amusing. Hep Stars member Benny Andersson
later became a mega star with ABBA.
COMPILATIONS
There are several shortcuts to the
Swedish 60's if you don't want to take the long and often
disappointing road to it. For a general overview there are two vastly
different editions of ”Stora popboxen”. The first one leans
towards the poppier side, while the second edition is more towards
the rhythm & blues sounds. Both of them are a bit much to chew
for the average listener, why I'd rather recommend the almost
flawless one disc comp ”Searching for Shakes”. Originally
released on vinyl by Amigo Records in the mid 80's, the CD reissue is
graciously expanded with meticulously chosen tracks in the same
garage/freakbeat vein as the original album. Some of the songs I've specifically mentioned
above are featured on this five star compendium of Sweden's rawest
sounds from the 60's. A similarly styled 2 CD set was fairly recently put
together by UK's RPM Records, entitled ”Svenska Shakers”, accurately subtitled "R&B crunchers, Mod grooves, Freakbeat and Psych-pop from Sweden 1964-1968". There's
some overlap with ”Searching for Shakes”, but the RPM release has
several hard-to-find nuggets not on the Amigo artefact and vice
versa, so if you like one of them, chances are you'll want the other
one as well. The RPM set looks pretty nice too.
There are several minor acts that
released utterly mindblowing one-off singles that are very rare and
seldom comped. The six-volume series ”Who Will Buy These Wonderful
Evils” does a brilliant job bringing several more psychedelic sides
together. Well-known bands such as Tages, Shanes, Ola & The
Janglers and Mascots rub shoulders with more obscure acts like The Outsiders (
"On My Magic Carpet" is a killer track!), T-Boones (featuring a very young Kenny Håkansson, as on the devastating
"I Want You"), the garage punk of The Other Side's
"Out My Light", the
brilliant Members Blues Band (whose
”P.S. Elic” is quite possibly
the trippiest single ever released in Sweden), New Creation
(Christian outfit whose
”He Is There” is a jawdropping slice of
proto-progressive late night psych), The Junk's & The Angels,
Älgarna etc etc etc. Reaching into the 70's, the ”Who Will Buy These
Wonderful Evils” volumes are mandatory to readers of this blog. I'm not
sure of their current availability but I assure you it's worth some
effort to track them down, the first four volumes in particular.
